evolution of an unbeliever

We got there late so we were sitting in the last, highest row of the balcony and when it came time to kneel the first time, I remained seated.  I had told my mother in advance that I was not going to kneel so there would be no surprises.  She grabbed my arm and tried to force me to my knees which only made me resist all the more.  After the prayer was over, my mother, mortified, made us all get up and leave right then and that was the last time we ever went to church as a family.  I was 17 and it was Christmas Eve.

We had not been in the habit of attending regular services since I was about 14.  After the big scandal, my mother could not bear to show her face in church, in public, having been booted out of their circle of friends.  Or perhaps the whole group of friends parted ways, I don’t know.  All I know is that all of a sudden their busy social life came to a screeching halt and it became my father’s responsibility to take us to church while she slept in with a ‘headache’.  My father was not a religious man and the only reason he went was because it was expected of him, as a family man.  So you can imagine it didn’t take much for us kids to talk him out of it and into taking us to breakfast at the diner instead.  Pretty soon, even that little farce was abandoned.  Except on Christmas Eve and Easter.  Those we still went to.

When I was 13 my parents enrolled me in communion classes along with all the other good sunday school kids.  In our congregation, the kids who were not old enough for communion were sent off to sunday school during services, after the plate was passed but before the sermon.  Once we had undergone communion, a big rite of passage, we were expected to stay for the sermon.  I was totally uninterested in this especially since they assigned homework.  Homework which I never did.  Towards the end of the classes, with communion looming nigh, a call went out to my parents and an emergency meeting was arranged...your daughter is in danger of not being confirmed.  This would not be tolerated, it would look exceedingly bad so under dire threat I had to outline the life of Christ as told by the book of John or maybe Peter and was admitted to the ranks of those that could receive the blood and body of Christ.  After the first few times, the novelty wore off and, thankfully, about that time we quit going to church on a regular basis...because really, eating your god?

One day at sunday school, I’m not sure how old I was, before puberty because after puberty my concerns were entirely different, the sunday school teacher was teaching us about creation, and I, fresh from science class and learning about dinosaurs and such wanted know, how, if this was true, dinosaurs could have roamed the earth for so long.  She blinked at me like an owl, momentarily silenced, before she blurted out some total nonsense.  That was the day I learned the bible was a crock.

Earlier still, I remember wondering how a loving god could condemn a new born baby.  Anyone could look at a new born and know there was no such thing as original sin.  The whole three in one bothered me as well.  Why was the pantheon of other religions bad, but the pantheon of Christianity was good?  And if god was so loving, why were so many people condemned to hell, especially the ones who never heard of him?  Especially the ones who lived good honest lives.  And nascent feminist that I was, I hated the whole story of the creation of Eve and the Garden of Eden.

This little piece was in response to Bonnie over at Original Art Studio who did a post the other day about god, good and evil.  I left a comment about what I perceive to be the nature of god and she responded with a question...how did you and at what point did you arrive at this way of perceiving life and God?...but before I can answer that I had to get to ground zero, disbelief in my natal religious indoctrination.